Gardener's Journal: After the transplant

It's leaves are brittle, brown and flaky. Even though I had put a stump beside it, the small tree drooped and was lifeless.

I kept watering it although I had little hope it would survive. It was a "volunteer" sprout which had shot up beside a stronger more steady tree. But the emerging root system was small and frail and transplanting did it in.

Today, I went out to take it out of its misery and remove it from view. I had put this off for several days, hoping that some sign of life would show itself and that I could keep it. I had big plans for it, since it was an oak sapling, that it would grow tall and shade the sunny side of our house. It was positioned just right and if it grew would be a beautiful specimen.

I had even gone so far as to plan other fall plantings around it, cultivating a theme with redbuds and evergreens to make a beautiful forest canopy.

Faithfully, each day I had watered it. Had refused to be daunted by its lack of life and its droopy shoulders.

But today it was clear, it would not be. So reluctantly, I went out shovel in hand, ready to do my deed.

As I neared it, I saw something. The tiny trunk was green. And just below all the crunchy, brown leaves there were small sprouting buds of new growth. I put my shovel down and ran to it..."you're alive" I cry, as if it could hear me.

I sat there on my knees for a bit just wondering how it could have fooled me so. Why had it waited so long to reveal itself? All along as I had been waiting, it had given no sign of life, no sign of anything. It was saving itself, waiting for the mystical combination of light, water and nutrients before it made its big debut.

Saving itself for more life later. Resting before reappearing. Emerging just when all hope might be gone.

A new tree, a new life...are they so different? Isn't the hardest part the "in-between" times of leaving and regrowth? Aren't the times when it appears no life is present just about the time when life and grace appear? And isn't in those times when my heart and soul cry out for some sign of life, of hope?

For some lives are like some trees. They cannot stay in the shadow of the established parent. They cannot flourish when competing with another's roots. They cannot reach to the heavens when their branches are tangling for sustenance, growth.

Tomorrow I will water my new tree again. I will not be so quick to give up life. I will not so soon cry "death" when I have seen the emergence of life in a translant.